A. Oh yeah, RPGs are definently a different ball game, I played through Titan Quest and its expansion more then once(cant remember if I actually beat it or not though), and ive played through Diablo 2 at least 20 times, and beaten 1 mode at least 5 times(gotten to nightmare about twice), as you can imagine I cant wait for Diablo 3 :P
I also played Morrowind, Oblivion and Fallout as different characters, though, they are more of a sandbox which makes it hard to explore every inch on the first run :P

B. I dont remember points in Doom 1..oh wait, yeah at the end of each level, now that you mention it, Duke3d had the same thing, and im pretty sure Quake had it too, not sure about Quake 2 though.

C. Ive been playing the PC version, its pretty damn fun, even just running around the city can be fun for a bit

D. I am the same way, and have a friend who is exactly the same! He hates most RPG computer games, and is currently playing shadowrun(he hates the recent video game of it though, even though its a shooter and not an RPG).
I guess there is always the pen and paper guy though :P
(Ive played in one of his sessions but I couldnt get into it).

As for rogue-likes, someone really needs to take the roguelike system, and build a fully animated game out of it, either Diablo style or Elder Scrolls style, preferably ES style, but itd be much harder to get right.
And if noone else does it, I will do it soon enough, I am getting back into programming after several years of not really doing anything with it, infact I just finished my Chip8 emulation core as a warmup

E. Yeah I have played GalCiv2, not a bad game but for some reason it didnt hook me(not sure why now)

A. Definitely! Wow, 20 times, lol... I went through the first one about 3 or 4 times and #2 twice.

I'm right there with ya, can't wait for D3!!! It's gonna be the Hack n Slash we've all come to love, but sooo much better... ALTHOUGH, I am VERY disappointed that Blizzard has refused to spend the money make a 360 degree rotating camera with full 90 degree tilt functionality. Their 'beyond' lame and BS excuse is that, "we want the game to retain it's old school feel", lol. All the hell they'd have to do to satisfy people that want a stiff isometric view is to make it an option, voila. It's obvious to me that they're greedy for money and refuse to spend the money and time to develop a kicka*s camera system (which has been the norm for what, 5 years now). They've got an up to date camera for SC2, whyTH won't they make one for the gorgeous world they're creating for D3???

B. Yeah, they had points at the end of the levels.... and tbh: I wish ID would go back to the idea of 'Episodes'... but I'm sure they won't... ever.

C. It looks fun, I'll definitely pick it up on Ebay when I see it for $20ish.

D. I've never heard of 'rogue-likes'... and yeah, I've tried the DnD thing on paper, and it just wasn't my cup. Programming eh, that's rad: pardon me for not knowing what Chip8 Emulation is, sometihng to do with Commodore or Atari?

E. Man, give it another go... if needbe: make your own custom race, or copy your fav race, and mess with the .xml file by "upping" some of the properties. I 'have' to have my custom race tweaked up, because I play against multiple, 'very' smart AIs and they still give me a hard time. GCIIToA is the only game that's given me the feeling that I am a God overlooking a Civilization in it's entirety, some RTSs have gotten close to that, but nothing like this game. Being in charge of 'taking over the Galaxy' is a reward unto itself.

Sorry for being off topic aswell, as far as Doom 4 goes, with the 30/60fps target thing, essentially when you're trying to target 60FPS you're forced to cut stuff out and optimize things to get the performance at a solid 60FPS(ie, they try to optimize every inch of the game so its always hitting the same FPS), obviously thats impossible but they can get something that is reasonably constant.
Lowering the target FPS from 60 to 30fps allows them to essentially have double the amount of stuff on the screen at any one time, then what they could at 60fps.
Now assuming Rage has been in development for alot longer then any Doom 4 development, Rage should hit stores a year or 2 ahead of Doom 4, so its reasonable to say Doom 4 will look 3 times as good as Rage(which I assume is targeting 60fps).
As for not being called Doom 4 or being a sequel of Doom 3, that also can make sense, Doom 3 was kind of a reimagining of Doom 1s storyline, so Doom 4 could continue on from Doom 2, and be more oldschool then Doom 3 was.
And to get away from being called, Doom 4, they could easily introduce a subtitle instead, like "Doom: The gates of hell" or something corny like that...
Thats my thoughts on the subject anyway

Cool beans, I understand now what the target frame rate means. I still disagree though that just because they're only going to have to have a framerate that's 30 fps less than 60, it doesn't necessarily mean that the game is going to look "3x as good", lol... imo anyway... this is obviously subjective.

On one hand, does it mean that 30 extra fps nets the makers of Doom 4 to have 3x as many models on screen as Rage? or Does it mean that there can be 3x the amount of shaders/effects present on screen at once? or That the textures can be twice or 3x as high quality as Rage? I really appreciate you explaining it in laymens terms, but I'd like to know how this "3x better" is going to be qualified is all.

Also, since they're goint to target (what imo is the 'lowest' a framerate can go for a game to still feel solid, with V-Sync on mind you) 30 fps: does anyone think ID is going to ensure that IDTech 5 does its own Triple Buffering or allow drivers to force it in order to aid the effects of using V-Sync that is?...

Hell, I say call it Doom 4 Hell on Earth and recreate part 2 with all the possibilities that the new Tech is going to open up. Have 30+ badguys on the screen at once, MASSIVE amounts of blood, bring back EXPLODING OF BODIES for christ sake, no idea why this was done away with.

I'm going through Return to Castle Wolfenstein right now, and guess what ID, the bodies EXPLODE... wtFingf! Bring that back!! Half Life had exploding bodies, lol... christ, come to think of it, Valve did away with the exploding bodies in part 2. Quake 1 and 2 had exploding bodies, and RTCW is IDTech 3 and it has them. wth

I'm guessing it isn't a continuation of the doom3 storyline, it has got a dedicted story writer; Graham Joyce.

On April 10, 2009 GameSpot published an interview with id Software's CEO Todd Hollenshead in which he revealed that Doom 4 is "deep in development." He stated however that the game is "not [in] pre-production". The development team is "relatively new" and id is "still actually hiring people" onto the Doom 4 team. GameSpot asked Hollenshead if Doom 4 is "a sequel? A reboot? A prequel?" and his response is "Gosh, that's actually an excellent question. It's not a sequel to Doom 3, but it's not a reboot either. Doom 3 was sort of a reboot. It's a little bit different than those, and if I told you why, I would get my ass kicked when I got back. So I'll just have to leave it at that."[5] On June 23, 2009, ZeniMax Media, best known for Bethesda Softworks, acquired id Software and announced that all future id Software games not subject to current third-party publishing deals (i.e. Rage by EA) will be published by Bethesda Softworks, Doom 4 being one.

Well, i'm speculating here, with higher resolution textures, more polygons and more accurate physics i imagine that Doom 4 will be better looking than Rage, but the framerates will be slower, which is fine because its aiming for 30 fps rather than 60 needed for a racing game like Rage.

Whether it looks 3 x better remains to be seen, that was just what Carmack said, personally i doubt it but what do i know. ???

Kicka*s! I appreciate the quote. Well sheet.... I dunno about y'all. I thoroughly enjoyed 3 EXCEPT for the constantly spawning badguys, it's my favorite shooter of all time.

I have a feeling 4 is going to be fubarred now.. after reading this quote, it's a "brand new" team... meh... they're going to spawn bad guys in all over the place and it's not going to feel right.

3 has the sickest atmosphere of any game (imo), but the way the bad guys are deployed for the most part weakens it severely. Pisses me off that instead of rectifying their retarded decisions in that respect: ID should go back over 3 and institute some kind of random badguy placement that feels intuitive and natural.

If I could have free reign and direct development of level design, 4'd be the top shooter of all time, but seeing as people who work those jobs want a Trillion/year and don't want to innovate: us gamers are going to be left with more of the same.

I can guarantee you this, guys (and you can say I'm talking sh*te all you want, that's fair), but mark my words: Rage is going to have all the innovation ID has saved up, and all the left over nonsense and half as*ed work is what D4 is going to get.

Reason I've come to this conclusion is because: ID considering where they came from, look at them now: they refuse to be contacted by the gamers they "claim to care about/want to impress/make fun games for", they don't give a f*ck about our opinions, and they sure as hell don't take criticism.

my blood's starting to boil thinking about how they care more about some 'new IP... whoooo' than making 4 the best shooter of all time

A. Definitely! Wow, 20 times, lol... I went through the first one about 3 or 4 times and #2 twice.

Well I played it alot with friends, and we kept going back to it and playing it through, I prolly only went through it by myself about 4-5 times(by myself I mean, we played together but mostly I ended up playing in SP mode with my character)

Quote:

I'm right there with ya, can't wait for D3!!! It's gonna be the Hack n Slash we've all come to love, but sooo much better... ALTHOUGH, I am VERY disappointed that Blizzard has refused to spend the money make a 360 degree rotating camera with full 90 degree tilt functionality. Their 'beyond' lame and BS excuse is that, "we want the game to retain it's old school feel", lol. All the hell they'd have to do to satisfy people that want a stiff isometric view is to make it an option, voila. It's obvious to me that they're greedy for money and refuse to spend the money and time to develop a kicka*s camera system (which has been the norm for what, 5 years now). They've got an up to date camera for SC2, whyTH won't they make one for the gorgeous world they're creating for D3???

TBH, I feel it would kind of ruin the flow if they made a rotatable camera, while I liked games like Dungeon Siege and Neverwinter Nights, I found I kept having to adjust the camera position all the time and I never found a suitable spot, and since they are top-down style games, they dont work so well with a third-person camera, not to mention all the annoying times when the camera gets blocked by some geometry.
That said, I am not a huge fan of top-down RPGs now, and I think diablo 3 is the only recent game I think suits this style, even Fallout 3 I am glad they went the way they did.
And dont get me started on 2d/top-down MMORPGs, the whole concept of a MMO is freedom and character advancement/customization, then they wack you on a 2d plane where you can barely make out your character.

Quote:

B. Yeah, they had points at the end of the levels.... and tbh: I wish ID would go back to the idea of 'Episodes'... but I'm sure they won't... ever.

I might do something in the project ive decided to start, but....since im the only one going to be working on it(for a couple of months at least), cant really expect to play it for at least a year, and it wouldnt be anywhere near as good as if a large company had worked on it.

Quote:

C. It looks fun, I'll definitely pick it up on Ebay when I see it for $20ish.

D. I've never heard of 'rogue-likes'... and yeah, I've tried the DnD thing on paper, and it just wasn't my cup. Programming eh, that's rad: pardon me for not knowing what Chip8 Emulation is, sometihng to do with Commodore or Atari?

Chip8 is a really old computer, I dont think its either one though, its just a really old, very simply computer, I could go into detail on the mechanics but only someone who has gotten into emulation programming, hardware engineers or other people who have delved into say, asm programming would understand
To make it simple though, Chip8 had a 64x32 pixel screen, pixels can only be on or off, they hold no colour value, by comparison, the gameboy has a palette of grayscale, also, the only sound a Chip8 has is a "Beep", its not capable of any other sounds.

Quote:

E. Man, give it another go... if needbe: make your own custom race, or copy your fav race, and mess with the .xml file by "upping" some of the properties. I 'have' to have my custom race tweaked up, because I play against multiple, 'very' smart AIs and they still give me a hard time. GCIIToA is the only game that's given me the feeling that I am a God overlooking a Civilization in it's entirety, some RTSs have gotten close to that, but nothing like this game. Being in charge of 'taking over the Galaxy' is a reward unto itself.

I may do, got alot of things on my plate at the moment though, so it wont be for awhile

Quote:

Cool beans, I understand now what the target frame rate means. I still disagree though that just because they're only going to have to have a framerate that's 30 fps less than 60, it doesn't necessarily mean that the game is going to look "3x as good", lol... imo anyway... this is obviously subjective.

On one hand, does it mean that 30 extra fps nets the makers of Doom 4 to have 3x as many models on screen as Rage? or Does it mean that there can be 3x the amount of shaders/effects present on screen at once? or That the textures can be twice or 3x as high quality as Rage? I really appreciate you explaining it in laymens terms, but I'd like to know how this "3x better" is going to be qualified is all.

Also, since they're goint to target (what imo is the 'lowest' a framerate can go for a game to still feel solid, with V-Sync on mind you) 30 fps: does anyone think ID is going to ensure that IDTech 5 does its own Triple Buffering or allow drivers to force it in order to aid the effects of using V-Sync that is?...

Well, the biggest factor is hardware, take Doom 3 for example, it was initially designed for GeForce 3 cards, and while it still ran on those cards, it didnt do very well, and iirc doom 3 came out after the release of the geforce 6x00 series? Thats 3 generations of hardware later.
Rage has been in development for awhile now so id expect it prolly in 2010, by the sound of it Doom 4 has only just started development, so I wouldnt expect it before 2011, we have the DX11 generation of hardware due before the end of the year, and at least another generation before 2011, so we are looking at at least 3 times the performance between now and 2011.
The lower framerate will allow more advanced shaders to be performed, extra physics time, more AI, more world detail etc, since at 60FPS, each frame can only take 16 milliseconds to process everything in the view, AI, sound, loading data(models/textures/sounds), physics, gameplay etc, it all has only 16ms to meet their 60FPS target.
With a 30FPS target though, the game now has 33 milliseconds per frame, thats more then double the time they have with a 60FPS target, which can be used for anything, not just graphics.
Now, art can vary from dev team to dev team, so we will never know how much better(or worse) Doom 4 will look compared to Rage.
So essentially, with over double the time for calculations per frame, including new, faster hardware, it has the potential to look at least 3 times better, not to say it will, but it could.
And it could even look better with amazing art design.

Quote:

Hell, I say call it Doom 4 Hell on Earth and recreate part 2 with all the possibilities that the new Tech is going to open up. Have 30+ badguys on the screen at once, MASSIVE amounts of blood, bring back EXPLODING OF BODIES for christ sake, no idea why this was done away with.

I'm going through Return to Castle Wolfenstein right now, and guess what ID, the bodies EXPLODE... wtFingf! Bring that back!! Half Life had exploding bodies, lol... christ, come to think of it, Valve did away with the exploding bodies in part 2. Quake 1 and 2 had exploding bodies, and RTCW is IDTech 3 and it has them. wth

You should play the latest Soldier of Fortune(I think it got banned in australia), that has all kinds of mess, infact, lemme find one of my screenshots.
Thats gotta hurt....

Quote:

I can guarantee you this, guys (and you can say I'm talking sh*te all you want, that's fair), but mark my words: Rage is going to have all the innovation ID has saved up, and all the left over nonsense and half as*ed work is what D4 is going to get.

Reason I've come to this conclusion is because: ID considering where they came from, look at them now: they refuse to be contacted by the gamers they "claim to care about/want to impress/make fun games for", they don't give a f*ck about our opinions, and they sure as hell don't take criticism.

I pretty much agree, though id arent really known for gameplay innovation :P
Not since Quake 1 anyway.

A. TBH, I feel it would kind of ruin the flow if they made a rotatable camera, while I liked games like Dungeon Siege and Neverwinter Nights, I found I kept having to adjust the camera position all the time and I never found a suitable spot, and since they are top-down style games, they dont work so well with a third-person camera, not to mention all the annoying times when the camera gets blocked by some geometry.
That said, I am not a huge fan of top-down RPGs now, and I think diablo 3 is the only recent game I think suits this style, even Fallout 3 I am glad they went the way they did.
And dont get me started on 2d/top-down MMORPGs, the whole concept of a MMO is freedom and character advancement/customization, then they wack you on a 2d plane where you can barely make out your character.

B. I might do something in the project ive decided to start, but....since im the only one going to be working on it(for a couple of months at least), cant really expect to play it for at least a year, and it wouldnt be anywhere near as good as if a large company had worked on it.

C. Chip8 is a really old computer, I dont think its either one though, its just a really old, very simply computer, I could go into detail on the mechanics but only someone who has gotten into emulation programming, hardware engineers or other people who have delved into say, asm programming would understand
To make it simple though, Chip8 had a 64x32 pixel screen, pixels can only be on or off, they hold no colour value, by comparison, the gameboy has a palette of grayscale, also, the only sound a Chip8 has is a "Beep", its not capable of any other sounds.

D. Well, the biggest factor is hardware, take Doom 3 for example, it was initially designed for GeForce 3 cards, and while it still ran on those cards, it didnt do very well, and iirc doom 3 came out after the release of the geforce 6x00 series? Thats 3 generations of hardware later.
Rage has been in development for awhile now so id expect it prolly in 2010, by the sound of it Doom 4 has only just started development, so I wouldnt expect it before 2011, we have the DX11 generation of hardware due before the end of the year, and at least another generation before 2011, so we are looking at at least 3 times the performance between now and 2011.
The lower framerate will allow more advanced shaders to be performed, extra physics time, more AI, more world detail etc, since at 60FPS, each frame can only take 16 milliseconds to process everything in the view, AI, sound, loading data(models/textures/sounds), physics, gameplay etc, it all has only 16ms to meet their 60FPS target.
With a 30FPS target though, the game now has 33 milliseconds per frame, thats more then double the time they have with a 60FPS target, which can be used for anything, not just graphics.
Now, art can vary from dev team to dev team, so we will never know how much better(or worse) Doom 4 will look compared to Rage.
So essentially, with over double the time for calculations per frame, including new, faster hardware, it has the potential to look at least 3 times better, not to say it will, but it could.
And it could even look better with amazing art design.

E. You should play the latest Soldier of Fortune(I think it got banned in australia), that has all kinds of mess, infact, lemme find one of my screenshots.

Thats gotta hurt....

I pretty much agree, though id arent really known for gameplay innovation :P
Not since Quake 1 anyway.

A. I hear what you're saying and understand that this is the general stance from most of the die hard original Diablo fans.... but seriously: how hard is it to simply 'make that an option'... I mean c'mon.... make it an option make it an option With said box checked in the options menu, the camera won't move and will only allow zoom in/out like the originals... but with it unchecked, people who want freedom of movement can rotate/tilt/and have big zoom in/out. Honestly... after playing NeverWinter Nights and that totally badass camera... it was 'very, very' hard to get going with Titan Quest. In TQ, here I was in this 'amazingly' well done little world... flowing grass, awesome water shaders/etc... and wtf, all I can do is zoom in and out. I've noticed the weird frame rate issues when zooming in on some spots of the world, and I imagine that Iron Lore simply couldn't figure out why they were losing so many frames when the camera was zoomed in... thus most likely lost all hope of implementing freedom of view for the player, because I'm sure with the engine in it's current state, it would have killed the frames.

If it's the same case with D3s' engine, then so be it, but in all honesty, considering Blizzard freakin prints their own money with what they pull in from WoW, there are (imo) zero excuses to not give players like me the best of both worlds. And with it being an option, players like you that want to go through it oldschool like, can have it their way too.

Being a programmer, you tell me: is it truely 'that' hard to design a gorgeous engine like TQ or D3 with 'that' many highly detailed models on the screen at once, 'and' give the player full camera freedom. I noticed there really aren't that many models on the screen at once in games like NeverWinter Nights, hence my assumption...

B. I assume you're talking about a mod for Doom3. Check these badboys out if you hadn't seen them... they're not complete, but I can't wait to play them if they're ever finished.

http://doom3.filefront.com/file/NightMare_Mod;83827
I doubt this guy will ever finish this, lol... but it looks soooo badass... it'd definitely make it so I could play Doom3 for life.... this guy is thinking about random monster placement... totally in line with what I envision for what todays shooter 'should' be.

C. Wow, that sounds oldschool! I'm sure you're doing it because it's fun for you and a learning experience taboot. I miss Tetris on my Gameboy... good times!

D. Thank you very much for the indepth explanation... it's all coming together for me now. With how you explained it, it sounds like.... AHHH ha! I think I got what they're going to do for Doom 4... having the target framerate at 30 instead of 60 'might' give them the extra juice needed to have hordes of baddies on the screen at once!!!! That makes sense to me. I don't see them using the extra room to improve the AI, not ID anyway, lol!

Awesome, maybe we'll have a true Doom 2 remake now! with lots and lots of baddies to run through

E. Lol, funny screenshot for sure. I've got it.. and part 2 gold. Haven't started 2, but I'm a couple levels into 3, it's been fun so far... I'm in some jungle level atm, haven't loaded it up in months though. I thought the reviews were WAY off base. Besides the engine not letting me force AA for whatever reason (thank god the engine looks good), V-Sync works and the frames are blazing fast. I think it looks great, has a really solid feel to it for a shooter, and is fun. Linear and obvious that it didn't have a huge amount of funds put into it, I think it turned out quite well considering....

I agree, but I disagree in that I think Doom 3 has the possibility to be the best Horror Shooter of all time. If that nightmare mod (that I linked to ^) ever comes to fruition, it'll end up being my fav game of all time. The atmosphere really gets to me when I'm there on Mars... the sounds, the placid sour look of everything, the darkness... it's the enemy placement/deployment that's holding it back... so in that sense, I think ID was 'right' on the verge of being very innovative at making the best horror shooter ever.

I truly don't understand how oversight like this happens at a top notch Video Game Company.... it's not rocket science... they had the formula 'so' close to being perfect.

WHOEVER the hell said, "lets spawn bad guys in all the time" needs to be flogged!

Well can't really blame them for not advancing gameplay, they are good at what they do and that is game engine technology + full utilization of the hardware we have, and that in itself is impressive.

They shift the game industry forward with each new engine they make starting since wolf3d and so on.

Although, unreal engine is taking some of that thunder away right now, such a shame though, we need more variety in game engines! so hurry up ID!

True.... but then with the same token: why aren't there lots of companies buying IDTech 4 and making games with it?????

SO many companies have made games with Unreal Tech and that's cool, I'm thankful because I love playing games period.... but.... why does no one utilize IDTech???

One game that has completely took me by surprise is this oldschool looking shooter that's soon to come out (if it hasn't already), and it uses IDTech 3 of all things, lol. I see people clowning it/yada, but it looks like it's gonna be a blast of a shooter.

Well can't really blame them for not advancing gameplay, they are good at what they do and that is game engine technology + full utilization of the hardware we have, and that in itself is impressive.

They shift the game industry forward with each new engine they make starting since wolf3d and so on.

Although, unreal engine is taking some of that thunder away right now, such a shame though, we need more variety in game engines! so hurry up ID!

I agree, Carmack is somewhat of a programmer genius, IMO
Idtech 4 was just the wrong tech for the wrong time, I believe, people were more interested in large open areas, where as idtech4, mostly showcased as rather enclosed, at least until megatexture, I think that will change a little with idtech5 though, as its easy to see with Rage, that the new engine is going to be well suited to all kinds of scenery, and has things that Unreal Engine doesnt have(go back and watch the original Rage techdemo videos, where they show the level editor aswell).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Protoplasym

A. I hear what you're saying and understand that this is the general stance from most of the die hard original Diablo fans.... but seriously: how hard is it to simply 'make that an option'... I mean c'mon.... make it an option make it an option With said box checked in the options menu, the camera won't move and will only allow zoom in/out like the originals... but with it unchecked, people who want freedom of movement can rotate/tilt/and have big zoom in/out. Honestly... after playing NeverWinter Nights and that totally badass camera... it was 'very, very' hard to get going with Titan Quest. In TQ, here I was in this 'amazingly' well done little world... flowing grass, awesome water shaders/etc... and wtf, all I can do is zoom in and out. I've noticed the weird frame rate issues when zooming in on some spots of the world, and I imagine that Iron Lore simply couldn't figure out why they were losing so many frames when the camera was zoomed in... thus most likely lost all hope of implementing freedom of view for the player, because I'm sure with the engine in it's current state, it would have killed the frames.

If it's the same case with D3s' engine, then so be it, but in all honesty, considering Blizzard freakin prints their own money with what they pull in from WoW, there are (imo) zero excuses to not give players like me the best of both worlds. And with it being an option, players like you that want to go through it oldschool like, can have it their way too.

Being a programmer, you tell me: is it truely 'that' hard to design a gorgeous engine like TQ or D3 with 'that' many highly detailed models on the screen at once, 'and' give the player full camera freedom. I noticed there really aren't that many models on the screen at once in games like NeverWinter Nights, hence my assumption...

Honestly, will a fully 3d engine, I see nothing holding them back from doing a free cam, tech wise, and I am not sure about the slowdown you mentioned, I cant recall experiencing such a slowdown myself in TQ, and yeah I cant think of any reason why itd slow down from zooming in, unless there is alot of particles flying around(I noticed in alot of games when the camera gets close to alot of particles things start to bog down a bit), that I can explain however, since whereever the particles are, they are drawing on top of the stuff behind it, so those pixels essentially are being "overdrawn"(ie, the GPU has to calculate it twice), its fine when the particles are small on the screen, since its only a few pixels that get overdrawn, however if you zoom in the particles cover more of the screen so more pixels are being written to the screen more then once, and if they cover your whole screen, 1 particle means every pixel is touched twice, 2 particles means they have to touch the pixels 3 times etc, and when you look at spell effects and the likes, you're usually talking about hundreds of particles, as to rotating the camera, that would be the same regardless.

I mean afterall it only draws whats on the screen anyway, so having the camera at a slightly different angle isnt going to change too much, the reason for the fixed camera has more to do with how things feel, in my opinion, the free camera works in NWN1/2 because it is a slower paced game, more often then not I found myself pausing and issuing individual commands to each character in my party, having a fixed camera would limit your view of the scene, since you really need to take everything in.
Diablo however is pure hack and slash, its 1 vs many, even if you get a mercenary or pets, you never control them directly, they usually do their own thing, and attack anything nearby, so having a free cam isnt as important to gameplay in this case, itll only cause gameplay to break into a slower pace.
Diablo uses pure mouse movement, theres no keyboard movement, and generally you are holding down the mouse button while running around, jaming hotkeys, clicking on enemies, with no auto attack also means you cant let go of the button to hold the right mouse button and do a quick camera movement(plus its usually used as a secondary ability hotkey).
Thats my reasoning for it all anyway, take it how you like

Quote:

B. I assume you're talking about a mod for Doom3. Check these badboys out if you hadn't seen them... they're not complete, but I can't wait to play them if they're ever finished.

http://doom3.filefront.com/file/NightMare_Mod;83827
I doubt this guy will ever finish this, lol... but it looks soooo badass... it'd definitely make it so I could play Doom3 for life.... this guy is thinking about random monster placement... totally in line with what I envision for what todays shooter 'should' be.

Actually, I am working on the Quake 1 engine, itll be a complete standalone project, I implemented HL1 BSP(almost identical to Q1 BSP) today in order to learn the structure better, I havent gotten the lightmaps rendering properly yet, but I am not sure if I will bother, since I will be stripping out both Q1 and the HL1 support and adding Q3 BSP support, then I plan to expand the format from there.
I will take a look at those mods though, I mean thats where I started out Q1 modding and HL1 modding(actually learnt C++ from working on the HL1 SDK....not the best way to learn :P )

Quote:

C. Wow, that sounds oldschool! I'm sure you're doing it because it's fun for you and a learning experience taboot. I miss Tetris on my Gameboy... good times!

Yeah thats pretty much the only reason I am doing it, I dont have much interest in the chip8 itself, and while I am probably at a level that the chip8 is too simple of a start, it does actually give a great foundation for future emulation projects(which will give me better understanding of the more complex hardware in PCs).

Quote:

D. Thank you very much for the indepth explanation... it's all coming together for me now. With how you explained it, it sounds like.... AHHH ha! I think I got what they're going to do for Doom 4... having the target framerate at 30 instead of 60 'might' give them the extra juice needed to have hordes of baddies on the screen at once!!!! That makes sense to me. I don't see them using the extra room to improve the AI, not ID anyway, lol!

Awesome, maybe we'll have a true Doom 2 remake now! with lots and lots of baddies to run through

Thats actually something I didnt think of, more enemies would be a great thing for Doom 4, and makes sense with the lower FPS target, though it does conflict with the "looking 3x as good" statement, though no doubt it WILL look better, having more enemies will limit how much they can push the graphics, but if they did it that way, I am sure itll be a better game

Quote:

E. Lol, funny screenshot for sure. I've got it.. and part 2 gold. Haven't started 2, but I'm a couple levels into 3, it's been fun so far... I'm in some jungle level atm, haven't loaded it up in months though. I thought the reviews were WAY off base. Besides the engine not letting me force AA for whatever reason (thank god the engine looks good), V-Sync works and the frames are blazing fast. I think it looks great, has a really solid feel to it for a shooter, and is fun. Linear and obvious that it didn't have a huge amount of funds put into it, I think it turned out quite well considering....

Yeah, while ive heard people sad bad things about its graphics and the like, its not a bad game, and I actually reinstalled it this week since I had a cousin over who loves the SOF series, but I couldnt find my original SOF1 disc, so I installed this instead

Quote:

I agree, but I disagree in that I think Doom 3 has the possibility to be the best Horror Shooter of all time. If that nightmare mod (that I linked to ^) ever comes to fruition, it'll end up being my fav game of all time. The atmosphere really gets to me when I'm there on Mars... the sounds, the placid sour look of everything, the darkness... it's the enemy placement/deployment that's holding it back... so in that sense, I think ID was 'right' on the verge of being very innovative at making the best horror shooter ever.

I truly don't understand how oversight like this happens at a top notch Video Game Company.... it's not rocket science... they had the formula 'so' close to being perfect.

WHOEVER the hell said, "lets spawn bad guys in all the time" needs to be flogged!

I cant say I disagree, I mean I did spend more time playing Doom 3 then some other games(like SOF: Payback above), and even imported the textures and normalmaps into my super old Quake1 engine(mostly riding on other peoples code, there is some talented coders who worked on Quake1 engine projects), not even sure if I have my old source code, would be interested in taking a look at it again...great, now im gonna have to hunt for it just to quench my curosity :P
Doom 3 itself though, was definently much slower paced then other shooters, especially at the time, borrowing some elements from SS2(audio logs etc), and thinking back now, they did an awesome job of keypads/computer interaction, turning your crosshair into a cursor when looking at the screens.
I also remember a video I made, which I am gonna hunt for now aswell :P

A. I agree, Carmack is somewhat of a programmer genius, IMO
Idtech 4 was just the wrong tech for the wrong time, I believe, people were more interested in large open areas, where as idtech4, mostly showcased as rather enclosed, at least until megatexture, I think that will change a little with idtech5 though, as its easy to see with Rage, that the new engine is going to be well suited to all kinds of scenery, and has things that Unreal Engine doesnt have(go back and watch the original Rage techdemo videos, where they show the level editor aswell).

B. Honestly, will a fully 3d engine, I see nothing holding them back from doing a free cam, tech wise, and I am not sure about the slowdown you mentioned, I cant recall experiencing such a slowdown myself in TQ, and yeah I cant think of any reason why itd slow down from zooming in, unless there is alot of particles flying around(I noticed in alot of games when the camera gets close to alot of particles things start to bog down a bit), that I can explain however, since whereever the particles are, they are drawing on top of the stuff behind it, so those pixels essentially are being "overdrawn"(ie, the GPU has to calculate it twice), its fine when the particles are small on the screen, since its only a few pixels that get overdrawn, however if you zoom in the particles cover more of the screen so more pixels are being written to the screen more then once, and if they cover your whole screen, 1 particle means every pixel is touched twice, 2 particles means they have to touch the pixels 3 times etc, and when you look at spell effects and the likes, you're usually talking about hundreds of particles, as to rotating the camera, that would be the same regardless.

C. I mean afterall it only draws whats on the screen anyway, so having the camera at a slightly different angle isnt going to change too much, the reason for the fixed camera has more to do with how things feel, in my opinion, the free camera works in NWN1/2 because it is a slower paced game, more often then not I found myself pausing and issuing individual commands to each character in my party, having a fixed camera would limit your view of the scene, since you really need to take everything in.
Diablo however is pure hack and slash, its 1 vs many, even if you get a mercenary or pets, you never control them directly, they usually do their own thing, and attack anything nearby, so having a free cam isnt as important to gameplay in this case, itll only cause gameplay to break into a slower pace.
Diablo uses pure mouse movement, theres no keyboard movement, and generally you are holding down the mouse button while running around, jaming hotkeys, clicking on enemies, with no auto attack also means you cant let go of the button to hold the right mouse button and do a quick camera movement(plus its usually used as a secondary ability hotkey).
Thats my reasoning for it all anyway, take it how you like

D. Actually, I am working on the Quake 1 engine, itll be a complete standalone project, I implemented HL1 BSP(almost identical to Q1 BSP) today in order to learn the structure better, I havent gotten the lightmaps rendering properly yet, but I am not sure if I will bother, since I will be stripping out both Q1 and the HL1 support and adding Q3 BSP support, then I plan to expand the format from there.
I will take a look at those mods though, I mean thats where I started out Q1 modding and HL1 modding(actually learnt C++ from working on the HL1 SDK....not the best way to learn :P )

E. Yeah thats pretty much the only reason I am doing it, I dont have much interest in the chip8 itself, and while I am probably at a level that the chip8 is too simple of a start, it does actually give a great foundation for future emulation projects(which will give me better understanding of the more complex hardware in PCs).

F. Thats actually something I didnt think of, more enemies would be a great thing for Doom 4, and makes sense with the lower FPS target, though it does conflict with the "looking 3x as good" statement, though no doubt it WILL look better, having more enemies will limit how much they can push the graphics, but if they did it that way, I am sure itll be a better game

G. Yeah, while ive heard people sad bad things about its graphics and the like, its not a bad game, and I actually reinstalled it this week since I had a cousin over who loves the SOF series, but I couldnt find my original SOF1 disc, so I installed this instead

H. I cant say I disagree, I mean I did spend more time playing Doom 3 then some other games(like SOF: Payback above), and even imported the textures and normalmaps into my super old Quake1 engine(mostly riding on other peoples code, there is some talented coders who worked on Quake1 engine projects), not even sure if I have my old source code, would be interested in taking a look at it again...great, now im gonna have to hunt for it just to quench my curosity :PDoom 3 itself though, was definently much slower paced then other shooters, especially at the time, borrowing some elements from SS2(audio logs etc), and thinking back now, they did an awesome job of keypads/computer interaction, turning your crosshair into a cursor when looking at the screens.I also remember a video I made, which I am gonna hunt for now aswell :P

A. Agreed, his engines have always amazed me.... IDTech 4 is still my favorite with U3 coming in a close second and Source in 3rd. I see your point about gamers 'wanting wide open gaming' at that time, but hell... I knew what to expect from Doom 3 before I ever even got my hands on it. I knew it was going to be a corridor shooter, I knew it was going to be linear, and I definitely knew it was going to be horror. It hit me like a ton of bricks when I first played (still does, lol) because my expectations were met with complete success! Yeah, I'm hoping that with IDTech 5, ID will make some money and lots of games will be made with it... in regards to the supposed ease of use for the editor, I'm thinking this might be the case for ID this time around. I've always read how people say that Epics' Engines/Editors are way easier to use vs. IDs' tools. I hope that's soon to change.

B. No, the frames don't slow down when I'm looking at a bunch of activity necessarily... honestly, I think it's simply the 169.21s I'm on and nothing more.

C. You make solid points, but : ) you can't refute the fact that giving the player the option is a 'nothing' considering you said it shouldn't have any negative effect on framerate. I'm the type of player that will have a fight in a hack n slash, and then want to look around at the world to see how things are constructed.

I bought my 88 for fast frames, and also so I could turn everything up... I honestly don't see the point in painstakingly designing a gorgeous world if one can't look at it from more than 1 angle... seriously.

D. Oh wow, IDTech 1... that's interesting that you're (I assume, pardon me if I'm incorrect) melding tech from IDTech 1 and HL1 (which is an amazingly beefed up IDTech 2), and then adding IDTech 3 stuff as well. Sounds very complicated to me. Understand that the only modding I've done was making maps for Doom 1/2 back in the day (they weren't very good, lol) and making maps for some RTSs (which anyone can do)... so what you're doing sounds advanced as hell to me.

E. Considering that Mame exists and rocks at what it does... what kind of emulation are you looking at accomplishing exactly? PS1/2 type stuff??

F. I agree... I say screw, "making it look 3x better"... just give us 3-4x the baddies on screen at once!!! Give us oldschool Doom1/2 type action!

G. I don't get those opinions: I think it's a great looking game! Hell, if I could force AA, it'd look sooo sharp! The models look awesome, the damage is really cool, and the world is detailed as can be. Framerate rocks, stable... I don't get the bad reviews. Yeah, it's linear as hell, but if one enjoys a good railride and knows what to expect, what's the problem?.. lol.

SOF 1... after looking at screenies (and reading reviews that 2 improved a LOT of things about the gameplay as well as the look of the engine), I decided that SOF 2 Gold was as far back as I was willing to go.

H. Yeah, I appreciate ID copying those elements from other games to make Doom3 more interesting, it definitely helped. I thought the voice acting was excellent and was definitely a huge part of me getting into the experience the first time I played it! I don't mind that they slowed the pace compared to the previous games... but honestly: take a look at that 'Nightmare Mod' and tell me that with that random script and different placement of monsters, Doom 3 couldn't be a much faster paced game...?...

I can't stress enough that I think the AI director invented by Turtle Rock should be implemented in ALL shooters from now on. It should be something to be licensed to other games imo.

WHY in the world do we want 'static' placement of badguys in our gaming worlds anymore???? When there's this completely bada** AI that will intuitively place enemies, randomly, every time we go through a level... I just don't get it.

If not pay for the rights to use that code, then copy it!!! I still don't have Left for Dead, but I've read plenty of reviews about everone raving about this AI Director... it sounds soooo awesome and I've been wanting something like this since I fell in love with Wolfenstein 3D.

Just imagine how the insane amount of replay value we'd all get from our favorite shooters if every 'runthrough' was different and unique.

Doom 3 would be beyond bada*s, HL2 anyone.... christ, the list could go on forever.

I'm not sure why I haven't seen anyone else online mention a similar lust for such tech to be implemented in our shooters. Am I the only one?...

A. Agreed, his engines have always amazed me.... IDTech 4 is still my favorite with U3 coming in a close second and Source in 3rd. I see your point about gamers 'wanting wide open gaming' at that time, but hell... I knew what to expect from Doom 3 before I ever even got my hands on it. I knew it was going to be a corridor shooter, I knew it was going to be linear, and I definitely knew it was going to be horror. It hit me like a ton of bricks when I first played (still does, lol) because my expectations were met with complete success! Yeah, I'm hoping that with IDTech 5, ID will make some money and lots of games will be made with it... in regards to the supposed ease of use for the editor, I'm thinking this might be the case for ID this time around. I've always read how people say that Epics' Engines/Editors are way easier to use vs. IDs' tools. I hope that's soon to change.

Well the main thing with IDTech5's editor, was the way you painted the world, you didnt just paint down textures or shaders, you painted down mesh-fields, essentially an area that has actual 3d geometry generated, its essentially just another paint layer, but doesnt add a flat surface(or a faked 3d surface like normal mapping or parallax mapping, and I am sure I spelled that wrong).
Not to mention its also using megatexture which has proven fast and provides a system that lets the game have a unique texture for every inch of the gameworld, none of this massive tiling of textures

Quote:

B. No, the frames don't slow down when I'm looking at a bunch of activity necessarily... honestly, I think it's simply the 169.21s I'm on and nothing more.

Well, while I dont recall getting such a slowdown, doesnt mean I didnt

Quote:

C. You make solid points, but : ) you can't refute the fact that giving the player the option is a 'nothing' considering you said it shouldn't have any negative effect on framerate. I'm the type of player that will have a fight in a hack n slash, and then want to look around at the world to see how things are constructed.

I bought my 88 for fast frames, and also so I could turn everything up... I honestly don't see the point in painstakingly designing a gorgeous world if one can't look at it from more than 1 angle... seriously.

Well see, since the game is made from the start for a fixed camera position, they are designing the graphics around that aspect.
Honestly though, this is one thing where its simply a matter of opinion, I like a free camera aswell, but I dont think itll work as well in a game like Diablo, Starcraft 2 is a bit different because, by nature of RTS, you are already looking at the big picture, you are controlling upto hundreds of units, so it makes sense to have more camera control.
But yeah, just my opinion

Quote:

D. Oh wow, IDTech 1... that's interesting that you're (I assume, pardon me if I'm incorrect) melding tech from IDTech 1 and HL1 (which is an amazingly beefed up IDTech 2), and then adding IDTech 3 stuff as well. Sounds very complicated to me. Understand that the only modding I've done was making maps for Doom 1/2 back in the day (they weren't very good, lol) and making maps for some RTSs (which anyone can do)... so what you're doing sounds advanced as hell to me.

Pretty sure HL1 used IDTech1, but they heavily modified certain parts, restructuring the engine.
However, suprisingly, its not as complex as it first sounds in regard to the levels, idtech 1, 2 and 3, and I think even 4 to some extent, use the same base level format: BSP
Though obviously by making modifications each time, the more iterations it goes through, the less like the previous versions it will be.
There only differences between HL1 and Q1 levels are the fact HL1 uses full colour for its static lights(stored in the level data), its version number (Q1 is 29, HL1 is 30), and the fact HL1 grabs its textures from an external .wad file, Q1 builds its textures into the level itself.
Other then those three things, the rest of the structure is identical, so I can pretty much use Quakes code to load the level, then just modify where it loads the textures and lighting and I have HL1 levels working in Quake
Though, with all this said, HL1 levels were done by someone back when the Quake source was first released, so I am not doing anything new, just learning the engine so I can better hack it up
Oh, also, Quake 3 levels are in the same boat, though there is alot more changed in Q3 BSP compared to HL1 BSP.

Quote:

E. Considering that Mame exists and rocks at what it does... what kind of emulation are you looking at accomplishing exactly? PS1/2 type stuff??

To be honest I dont really have any goals within emulation itself, though I will eventually have a single emulator, emulating many different machines that I will prolly release at some point, but I doubt I would support it more then that.
Its mainly just a hardware learning experience, since in order to emulate the hardware, you have to know how it works, and there is actually bugs in the hardware(like the gameboy for example) that games actually rely on, so you have to add these bugs and quirks into the emulation aswell.

I am reminded though of an old design I did for something I dubbed a "MMOU", thats MMO Universe, where you could walk on planets, in ships etc.
But the the idea that is relevant is my object system.
Essentially instead of just having a physics object that you can move around or maybe destroy like in CSS, they would be fully functional objects, the basic idea is that each object would have interface Inputs and Outputs, pretty much like plugging a cable into the back of your computer, these Inputs and Outputs would have a type, to say what they can take in and put out, through each I/O.
Now with this system modeled out, take a basic example, in the game you have a "ComputerTower", it has 2 Inputs: Keyboard, Mouse, and 2 outputs: Audio, Video
So you take your ComputerTower, and can choose what to actually plug into it, you could play the Video out into your Monitor object, or maybe plug it directly into the ships DisplayScreen, which I am sure the captain wouldnt be too happy about :P
After I/O, comes the devices "Function", which is essentially what it does with the input and what it outputs.
Thats a boring example though, so I will go with something with a bit more gameplay relevance, this same system, you have a Transmitter object which takes an Audio input, and has a RadioWave output(essentially an area broadcast on a certain frequency), you have a Mic which obviously only has Audio output, so you plug it into the Transmitter and it sends out RadioWaves, on a certain frequency, of an audio type.
Someone could have a Receiver which takes RadioWaves as input, and has an Audio output, if they tune in to the right frequency, or "near enough", they will start to pick up the signal which gets sent through its Audio output, which could be hooked up to a recorder or maybe just speakers.
So taken the above, say the first person with his Transmitter wants to send a message to his guild, so he uses the Transmitter, the person with a Receiver might be an enemy spy, which will be able to listen in on the transmittion, as long as he has the right frequency.
Though things will be a bit simpler then that, since "frequency" wouldnt be number controller as such, your guild frequency wont be a random number, itll be a name etc, one thing I thought about alot when I was designing the MMOU was how the user interacts with things, no matter how complex the core of the game is, if the interface is kept simple, the User will "get it" very quickly
Now take my emulation code, wack that into a game Object, and we have emulation working right inside the game

Phew, that was a bit longwinded, hope you dont mind the read :P
The MMOU was an old idea anyway which might never happen, but its always on the back of my mind.

Quote:

F. I agree... I say screw, "making it look 3x better"... just give us 3-4x the baddies on screen at once!!! Give us oldschool Doom1/2 type action!

Couldn't agree more, though I am not holding my breath

Quote:

G. I don't get those opinions: I think it's a great looking game! Hell, if I could force AA, it'd look sooo sharp! The models look awesome, the damage is really cool, and the world is detailed as can be. Framerate rocks, stable... I don't get the bad reviews. Yeah, it's linear as hell, but if one enjoys a good railride and knows what to expect, what's the problem?.. lol.

SOF 1... after looking at screenies (and reading reviews that 2 improved a LOT of things about the gameplay as well as the look of the engine), I decided that SOF 2 Gold was as far back as I was willing to go.

Yeah, thats the nasty thing about Opinions, even though you think something might be really stupid or insane, someone will agree with it.
The internet taught me that suprisingly :P

Quote:

H. Yeah, I appreciate ID copying those elements from other games to make Doom3 more interesting, it definitely helped. I thought the voice acting was excellent and was definitely a huge part of me getting into the experience the first time I played it! I don't mind that they slowed the pace compared to the previous games... but honestly: take a look at that 'Nightmare Mod' and tell me that with that random script and different placement of monsters, Doom 3 couldn't be a much faster paced game...?...

I can't stress enough that I think the AI director invented by Turtle Rock should be implemented in ALL shooters from now on. It should be something to be licensed to other games imo.

WHY in the world do we want 'static' placement of badguys in our gaming worlds anymore???? When there's this completely bada** AI that will intuitively place enemies, randomly, every time we go through a level... I just don't get it.

If not pay for the rights to use that code, then copy it!!! I still don't have Left for Dead, but I've read plenty of reviews about everone raving about this AI Director... it sounds soooo awesome and I've been wanting something like this since I fell in love with Wolfenstein 3D.

Just imagine how the insane amount of replay value we'd all get from our favorite shooters if every 'runthrough' was different and unique.

Doom 3 would be beyond bada*s, HL2 anyone.... christ, the list could go on forever.

I'm not sure why I haven't seen anyone else online mention a similar lust for such tech to be implemented in our shooters. Am I the only one?...

You know, I have had the same kind of ideas, for a different MMO design I did(I know I do alot of designs dont I? :P )
Its a bit different to the way L4D works though, but is kind of the same thing, though thats because I thought of it years ago.
Essentially each NPC faction is a dynamic faction, there is no static NPC spawning in the design at all, each NPC in a faction has its own basic AI to fulfill its goals, then there is a faction AI which just manages the overall needs of the faction, different faction types(races) have different needs.
And to fill those needs it assigns an NPC a job, such as guard, scout, blacksmith, hunter, spawner(thats a fun job..) etc
So the faction will have needs such as food, water, land, war, population etc
A faction of orcs for example, would have a higher war need then other races, and to fulfill that there would be infighting, raids on nearby villages etc.
So a faction has needs, that the faction AI assigns jobs, or roles, to the NPCs within the faction to meet those needs.
The unique aspect of this though is the spawner role, which is actually a building, not an NPC, each spawner spawns new NPCs at a constant rate, until the faction grows a certain size then it splits into 2 factions, and 1 faction attempts to establish a home in a new location.
So essentially, these spawners will never stop spawning, it wont wait for an NPC to die before it spawns a new one, so if players, or other NPC factions, dont get in and thin them out, they keep expanding.
Now the fun thing about this is NPC factions will collide for land, meaning theres going to be battles all over the place as factions fight for land.
Now this brings me to the final piece in the faction puzzle: spawner buildings can be destroyed, and if theres noone left that the faction AI can assign to a builder role to rebuild a spawner, that faction simply dies out, leaving that area open for other factions to come in and take it, or even for a player guild to take it as their own.
Plus, NPC factions will raid player towns aswell, means the world is constantly changing, and if there were multiple servers, one server might have orcs everywhere, where as on another server orcs could be wiped out to extinction(though the system will find some way to bring back extinct races from time to time).

And I completely agree, a dynamic spawning system, even in a FPS is much more interesting then a static spawning system that is the same every time you play through, though honestly, while L4D is different every time, it never seems to be quite like what ive read about, generally, I think the AI director is asleep when I am playing :P